Monday, February 4, 2019

The magic of eagles in the fog

It
is a wonderfully strange, foggy day. After midweek temperatures edging
down near to minus 30, we are almost 70 degrees warmer. Ice and slush
and ice covered puddles are everywhere, and the world is positively
steaming. We look out our high in the sky apartment windows and before
us the world disappears into the distance; moody street scenes, then
vague shapes, then nothingness. Let's go into nothingness. It awaits us.

My
wife and I go sliding dangerously along the city sidewalks and venture
out over a bridge on the Mississippi River. It looks wild below us, the
ice is cracked, translucent, and full of inscrutable designs. An eagle
appears suddenly from out of the fog like a magic trick. Maybe we were
the magic trick to him. He rears up in the air. He wheels around,
gathering the mist about his shoulders, and he circles off to the
riverbank to take a roost in a tree. If I hadn't been watching him land
I'd never spot him. The riverbank is mottled gray-black and white in the
broken snow, and so, in the end, with his charcoal body and white head and tail, is he.

Then, as I gazed upon him, marveling over a camouflage I'd never known about,
he, without warning, took an enormous, squirting shit, a gout of globby, viscous white bursting unmistakably out of him.

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.

Not so entertaining sort of legal exclaimer that seems wise to post if you think about it

I in no way speak on behalf of or in any way for the Library I work for, though if they would like me to I am sure we can come to an agreement.

My blog is not written or worked on during paid time and if it ever appears to be that is only for narrative umph and to reflect on my thought processes and experience as things happened.

Things here are fictionalized and obscured sometimes, and though I stand behind my portrayl of the spirit and feel of things it would be wrong to ascribe too much to a specific Library, event, or person.